Disparity in journal bundle pricing across institutions
PNAS just released an article that shows the huge price disparity paid to publishers by academic libraries for journals as part of bundled packages. Looking at institutions of comparable size, in some cases one university is paying twice as much as another for the same set of journals. The authors had to use the freedom of information act in order to gather this information, and the publishers tried unsuccessfully to block the release of the data.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/06/11/1403006111
Note you can access the abstract and the footnote at the above link, but to get the full-text of the article you will need to have a subscription to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Joe Wible, Hopkins Marine Station
